Honda Develops Brain-Machine Interface Technology

Honda, ATR and Shimadzu jointly develop brain-machine interface technology enabling control of a robot by human thought alone. Exciting future we will have.

HRP-4C Gynoid

HRP-4C is a humanoid robot. In my opinion this robot is interesting with the overall design recreating human appearance. Probably something like that, but with a little improvement in the hardware and the artificial intelligence can be used like companion or sex toy. On second thought, probably there is no need of too much improvements, apparently people are satisfied to use just rubber dolls.

Boston Dynamics BigDog Robot

This is BigDog - a dynamically stable quadruped robot. It is powered by simple gasoline engine. Impressive to look how it regain balance just like an animal.

Largest aircraft

The world's largest aircraft is Antonov An-225 Mriya. Maximum gross weight 640 tonnes. Lenght 84 m and wingspan 88.4 m.

What is an Ekranoplan

An ekranoplan (Russian: экранопла́н, literally "screen plane") is a vehicle resembling an aircraft but which operates solely on the principle of ground effect. Ground effect vehicles (GEV) fly above any flat surface, with the height above ground dependent upon the size of the vehicle. Ekranoplan design was conceived by Soviet engineer Rostislav Alexeev.

During the Cold War, ekranoplans were sighted for years on the Caspian Sea as huge, fast-moving objects. The name Caspian Sea Monster was given by US intelligence operatives who had spotted the huge vehicle, which looked like an airplane with the outer halves of the wings removed. After the end of the Cold War, the "monster" was revealed to be one of several Soviet military designs meant to fly only a few meters above water, saving energy and staying below enemy radar.

The ekranoplan has a lifting power of 1,000 tonnes, among the largest ever achieved. The KM, as the Caspian Sea Monster was known in the top secret Soviet military development program, was over 100 m long (330 ft), weighed 540 tonnes fully loaded, and could travel over 400 km/h (250 mi/h), mere meters above the surface of the water.

(The video is documentary in Russian)

Source: Wikipedia

Real flying saucer

Amazing project for commercially sold flying saucer for as little as 90,000$. Its called M200G Neuera, M200G Volantor or M200X (not really clear which one is on the video)

Update: Seems the project failed, however it helped move all of us an inch closer to the personal flying vehicles.

Source: Moller, Wikipedia